Designer Brand Faucets/Fixtures - Your *in the field* experience

Just curious how reliable or not so reliable are those designer line brand faucets/fixtures.
Went shopping for bathroom stuff and came across alot of ~off brands~ I was not used to seeing.

Not sure how fashion vs function plays out in these .

Brands life Rohl, Fima, KWC, etc.

Call me old school but when I shop for faucets, I look at Moen, Kohler, Chicago to see if any of the designs fit the bill 1st.

Dornbracht, which I know is quite popular in the architectural world.

Are there designer brands to avoid and are these some ~deeesigner~ brands that are okay to consider that would be okay from either a reliability standpoint if not from a post service/repair standpoint.

Thanks Jim. What spurred this post was this post as well..
Just replace a valve stem in my Kohler shower/tub diverter. Redesign replacement part looked like a slightly bigger O ring.

With this post...I've yet to put much thought, but does a hodge-podge brass couple/converter, series of fitting exist that could in theory make it so it uses standard water supply hoses.
If not, this propietary thing is just nuts. If a hose was to fail Friday afternoon, would that mean one would have till wait till business day Monday, order the part and then either pay a arms length fee for expedited shipping for such a non standard part

Designer stuff is almost always a PITA when it comes to parts...
The worst situation for you may be being the proud owner of an $800 kitchen sink faucet that the maker goes out of business andhave no replacement parts available.

Designer stuff is almost always a limited production so don't expect to find after market parts available...

Are you saying that a "hardware store" had ALL those brands? It must have been some store, because many of those brands are usually only sold by "specialty suppliers", and no one store has ALL of them. In many cases your "designer" faucet may be a Central, Kohler, Price Pfister, etc., faucet which the company adds their own "trim" to it, and then, to use your term, charges an "arm's length fee" for it. Companies are in business to make money, NOT to make it easier for you to get repair parts from some other source, which is why parts are proprietary.

it was not a ~hardware store~ per se but my wording as such. When I redid my other bathroom, I thought the general consensus was PF was pretty but junk.
Thus I am revisitng the question now, to see if anything has changed and what to avoid ....
Never knew SO MUCH designer brands existed out there, until I visited this store.

While they did carry the Toto toiler, the Robern mirror, etc I like - I did not see nary a nil of any the latter brands like Moen, etc.

Kinda threw me for a curveball on whether or not any of these brands stood their test of time.